| This content applies solely to Vendor Management, which must be purchased separately from the Appian base platform. |
As a Vendor, you will gain access to the Vendor Management self-service landing page after a contracting officer registers your account, or you have registered yourself through the vendor portal. The Government Agency shall use a questionnaire in the registration form to gather additional information from you. When a questionnaire is visible during your registration, it means the Government Agency must approve your registration. You will be notified about the approval status through the email address you provided during registration.
In the Vendor Management solution, you can review opportunities posted by the contracting officers of the Government Agency you are working with and submit a proposal when an opportunity looks like the right fit.
After you mark an opportunity as interested, you can work with the contracting officer or manager to:
The Vendor Management solution makes it easy to manage the entire opportunity proposal process in one place. This guide walks vendors through the most common views and actions you will use to view and manage your opportunities.
The Vendor Portal is set up on the contracting agency side and acts as a landing page for public users to browse or search for public opportunities and register themselves as vendors. After registering your vendor account, you can sign in and gain access to the secure vendor site, communicate with contracting officers, and take action on opportunities.
You must register on the Vendor Portal to get access to Vendor Management solution. Your entity's unique identifiers such as UEI, CAGE, TIN, or FEIN, primary contact email address and number, website, and address are required for registration.
To register as a Vendor from the Vendor Portal:
Click +REGISTER.
Fill the following fields in the Profile section:
CAGE
FEIN
Fill in the following fields in the Business Information section:
County
Click NEXT.
Fill in the answers for the questions in the Additional Information section.
Notifications are sent to your email address when the Government Agency decides on your registration:
You can still view and search for public opportunities without being a registered vendor by searching the Opportunity ID or Keyword. You can also see all of the public opportunities posted by the agency by clicking SEE ALL PUBLIC OPPORTUNITIES.
After logging into your vendor account, you will see an overview of your ongoing opportunities. You can also check opportunity statuses at a glance and review any upcoming deadlines for opportunities you are involved in directly from HOME.
Under Opportunity statuses, you can view an overview of how many of your opportunities fall under the following statuses:
When you express interest for an opportunity, then the status shows Interested. When you have submitted some of the required documents for an opportunity, then the status shows In Progress. When you have submitted your proposal with all necessary documents, then the status shows Submitted. When the contracting personnel has asked you to resubmit your proposal, then the status shows Requested Resubmission.
Under My Opportunities, you can view a detailed card for each opportunity you are currently involved in. Each opportunity card will be color coded and tagged by status.
Clicking View All will bring you to the opportunities list view and view all available opportunities.
The updates section will show you updates from the last thirty days to any of the opportunities you are involved. The calendar will display any upcoming deadlines.
Click Profile on the left navigation pane to go to your vendor profile page. From here, you can view information about your business, manage users, and see any ongoing opportunities.
When you get access to Vendor Management solution after approval from contracting staff, you can see following additional details in your profile:
Additional Information tab - You can see the questionnaire and the responses you provided during registration.
The Summary tab in the vendor profile summary view includes your profile information added during the registration process.
Primary: Information about your business such as physical address, Unique Entity ID and CAGE numbers or TIN and FEIN, Expiration date, and website.
Business Information: Important information such as your Doing Business As, Business Type, PCS Code, NAICS Codes, and NIGP Codes.
The Users tab displays a list of all users assigned to your vendor account. A user is either an administrator or a Point of Contact (POC).
Vendor admins can add additional users to the vendor account. To add a new user, click + CREATE USER and fill out the form with information about the user. The new user will receive an email with sign in instructions.
The Opportunities tab displays a list of all the opportunities to which you have shown interest, submitted a proposal or asked to resubmit. You will see the following details about each opportunity:
You can filter by Opportunity status, Type, Response Due, and My status to focus on what you are looking for.
Click the opportunity name to drill through and learn more about that specific opportunity.
Vendor admin users can also edit vendor profiles if updates are needed.
To update your profile information:
In the Summary tab, click the edit icon in the Profile section.
From the Update Profile dialog, update the information in the respective fields as necessary.
To add your business information:
To add PSC, NAICS or NIGP codes, click Add Another in the respective sections and add the information in the respective fields as necessary.
To update your business information:
To add your financial information:
If your business remittance address is same as your primary business address, then select the Same as primary option in the Remittance Address field. If the remittance address is different from your primary address, then enter the address in the respective fields.
To update your financial information:
If your business remittance address is same as your primary business address, then select the Same as primary option in the Remittance Address field. If the remittance address is different from your primary address, then enter the address in the respective fields.
To change your contact information:
Vendor Management makes it simple and easy to view active opportunities and take action on individual opportunities. For example, you can mark an opportunity as interested or submit questions to the contracting officer. When you are ready to submit your proposal, you can view instructions and required documents clearly outlined on the opportunity summary page.
Go to the Opportunities tab to browse opportunities available to your business. You will see the following details about each opportunity:
You can filter by Opportunity status, My status, Type, and Response Due to focus on what you are looking for.
Click the opportunity name to drill through and learn more about that specific opportunity.
When you land on an opportunity summary view, you will see a detailed view of the opportunity's information including its description, instructions, required documents, and updates.
To see all the documents required for submitting a proposal for this opportunity, click Proposals.
If you are interested in submitting a proposal for this opportunity, mark it as interested by clicking MARK AS INTERESTED. Once you mark an opportunity as interested, you can submit question documents and required documents for your proposal.
You can submit questions or upload question documents about the opportunity until the questions due date. The questions allow you to correspond with the opportunity manager and clarify any questions you have about the opportunity.
To submit a question:
To submit a question document:
After the question documents are submitted, an update will be issued by the Contracting Officer or Manager managing that opportunity once a response is made.
In order to submit a proposal, all required documents need to be uploaded by the proposal deadline.
To view and submit required documents:
After uploading all of your required documents, you can submit your proposal to be reviewed by the contracting team by clicking SUBMIT PROPOSAL. You will receive an update with the result of your proposal once it has been viewed and processed by the contracting team.
You can see the awards allocated to your business from the Awards tab. From the list view, you can see the award name, status, vendor, and contract dates. Click the award name to drill down and learn more about that specific opportunity.
When you land on an award summary view, you will see a detailed view of the award's information including its description, award documents, funding, instructions, and updates. From the summary view, you can upload documents and correspond with the contracting officer about the award.
From the Messages tab, you can see ongoing correspondence with contracting officers or managers related to an opportunity or award. This functionality allows you to handle more of your workflow in one central location and associate existing data and documents with messages.
To compose a new message, go to MESSAGES and click COMPOSE MESSAGE. Fill in the opportunity, subject, message, and attachments related to your message. Proposals should not be attached to a message but rather submitted through the opportunity.
You can also view, compose, search for, and reply to opportunity specific messages from the opportunity summary page. To do so, click on an opportunity and go to the Messages tab.
Now that you have walked through this Vendor Management User Guide and understand some of the basic features and views, you can start using VM to set up your profile and browse opportunities.
Vendor Quick Start Guide
